Richard Estes comment on "West of the Tracks":
I watched the first two of these at the PFA back in 2004, 2005, sometime
around then, and saw the last one, "Rails" at the SF Art Institute, or
some such place, a year and a half later. I drove quite a distance to
see them because I was highly motivated to do so, I sensed that there
was something unique and compelling about them from the program guide
description (somewhere here, there is an insight about how one of the
only remaining places for the cinematic presentation of working class
life is within the academically supported screening of films at
universities art schools and art museums).
Anyway, your characterization of them as something Gray or Blake might
have done with a video camara in the 18th Century is apt. Given his
vivid characterization of Manchester in the 1840s, Engels might have
done the same. In "Rust", the beginning and ending sequences of the
goods train entering and exiting the factories symbolizes our entry and
exit into an industrial world that has been almost completely
dismantled, along with the social and culture life associated with it.
Factory workers move through abandoned parts of the complex to work in
those areas still open for production, and the scenes of these people at
work are some of the greatest visual representations of industrial labor
ever achieved. Wang Bing poignantly presents the social and cultural
aspects of the closure of the complex in the second part, "Remnants", as
the loss of worker housing results in the disintegration of decades of
social relationships. There may be no agit-prop here, but Michael Moore
has never come close to attaining the artistic and political impact of
these films. I hesitate to say that something is the best, or essential
or a masterpiece, but this is probably the most compelling work that I
have seen in the last 15 years, since I had the opportunity to see
"Berlin Alexanderplatz", which is obviously very different. But the
social insight and the identification with the everyday life and
emotional experiences of people who have been marginalized is a thread
that runs between them.
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Also this:
Coincidentally, WEST OF THE TRACKS will be playing MoMA over two days
later this month:
http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/film_screenings/18241 &
http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/film_screenings/18242